


Porcelain

by garbagebear (paranoidparsnip)



Series: TG drabbles [1]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Hide tries to help but holy shit how do you even start to help, M/M, Pain, my sons get put through so much tragedy and i'm not helping with more angsty ficlets smh, post-torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:11:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4621392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paranoidparsnip/pseuds/garbagebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wanted to see his old apartment before heading off with Aogiri, but he didn't expect someone else to show up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Porcelain

It’s almost laughable how words failed him so utterly in this moment. Because he knew words, by God, he _loved_ them. He loved how they could be forged together to form an entire universe. How they could start or end someone’s life. How different meanings of the same phrase rewrote images into his head. Words were beauty in little sounds or symbols on paper.

Yet, oh, how they abandoned him now. Like all other things had the inclination to do. At once he felt empathy towards sailors lost and adrift at sea. Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink. His vocabulary was just the same. Spread out before him like the white-capped ocean herself, wild, taunting. He could not pick a single consonant to use, nor a single vowel.

Standing on the other side of the doorway holding onto the knob in the fashion of a lifeboat. The person outside rang the doorbell again and called with concern,

“Yo, it’s me.” He knew that voice, he would know it anywhere. It was a sage and calm melody that brightened his lonesome days. His human days.

“…I know you’re home.”

Voiceless, he leaned his head against the wooden door, wanting his friend to leave. He couldn’t face him like this, not in this state.

“Listen, I won’t ask what’s wrong. Can I just see you for a sec? It feels like forever, man.”

It seems like it was another time, doesn’t it? A happy, foolish dream. When all that was troublesome could be solved by studying. Classes and college. Books and burgers. Were those really what used to pass through his thoughts? Even the everyday struggles of being half-ghoul felt calm in comparison to these last few unbearable days.

“I won’t even diss your ugly furniture! You won’t get a better offer than that!” Kaneki could picture the wide grin and how he crossed his arms behind his head.

“You’ve always been a bit of a recluse. It was dang near impossible to figure out where you went to, no one wanted to talk about it. Almost like you disappeared.”

If it were that simple, things would be easier for everyone. Easier for the others to say he went missing instead of turning to Aogiri. Easier for Hide to think that he was gone somewhere instead of being a ghoul. It would have been easier all together for them to think he was dead. In truth, he might as well be, he had left everyone behind.

They hadn’t seen each other since he worked at Anteiku. This new version of himself shouldn’t mar what Hide thought. He’d ruin the last mental images of what he used to be. The appearance finally matched the monster. It would just worry him.

“If I did something to piss you off, go ahead and lay it on thick. I don’t know what I did, but I didn’t mean it and I’m sorry. Okay?”

No, that wasn’t it. Why would he ever think that? It was never Hide’s fault, none of it. It was _his_ fault, for being inadequate. There was a remedy to weakness and he was trying to be better, to be stronger, even if it was killing him, he was _trying._

Outside of the door became quiet for a while, long enough to where Kaneki had a half hope that he had left. Unfortunately, his enhanced sense of smell deprived him of that false comfort. Indeed, Hide was closer to the threshold if nothing else. Leaning against in it a parallel he didn’t know he was doing. The human’s scent permeated through the wood. He might as well be standing face to face with him.

“Please, open the door. Kaneki.” Hide said in a softer, more vulnerable voice. One unlike his usual loud and cheerful demeanor. Kaneki felt stricken at the change, for he never wanted to cause him any grief. That was why it was better this way, if he kept himself away from all of this. In a woven web above those he cared about. Why couldn't they see that?

_*click*_

The door opened slowly to reveal a pale, lithe figure standing resolute in the space. Hide’s eyes widened at the sight. Normally, one would have been surprised at the shock of black clothes and snowy hair, the man’s contrast and appearance were daunting. Hide didn’t see any of that. What caught him unawares was the downcast, grey irises that stayed fixed to the ground. He had grown accustomed to knowing what he thought Kaneki looked like, how he felt and reacted. They’d grown up together since they were kids.

This person before him felt like his best friend of many years, but there was almost something missing. Back when they went to college, Kaneki had been awkward and shy, full of excited curiosity that he couldn’t always suppress. In its stead now was a haunting new emptiness. Those eyes no longer held that delighted inquiry of life. _‘I want to see more!’_ was replaced with _‘I’ve seen too much.’_

Among all the people in his life, never did Hide think that it would be Kaneki Ken to bear the mark of the world-weary. Something crumpled inside his chest.

He looked so tired.

With difficulty, he raised his sight from the floor to meet Hide’s gaze. He saw the shock and knew it was warranted. For he was a truly monster, a flesh-eating beast that does nothing but take, take, take from the lives of others. He knew the shock, but he didn’t expect the gladness.

Hide let out a sigh of relief and gave him a warm smile. “Good to see you, Kaneki.”

He wished he could recall what surprise felt like, it had been cut away with most of him. Left to decay in the piles of tissue and coagulated blood. Kaneki gave a nod indicating a response.

“Can I… come in?” Hide ventured a little further.

Silently, his friend stepped to the side and opened the door wider. Slipping past him, Hide noticed that there was a lingering aroma of blood coming from him. A sharp, unmistakable metallic smell. Far from the vaguely earthy scent of coffee that used to surround him. The apartment seemed perversely out of character for its current resident. Worn furniture and books scattered everywhere definitely felt like Kaneki to him. Or at least, it used to.

Now as he looked around, the apartment didn’t fit this new form standing behind him by the door. A relic, maybe. A time capsule. The dwelling ground of an easily embarrassed bookworm, whom he had been grown up beside.

Yet that mattered to Hide less and less as the truth of it sunk in, that Kaneki wasn’t hiding right now. He was here, in whatever manner he could be. That was enough.

He plopped down on the old sofa, the wafting cloud of dust sent him into a coughing fit. Waving a hand to disperse the haze, Hide scanned the room fondly.

“Well your cleaning skills haven’t gotten much better, have they?”

“…mm-hmm.” He made the smallest sound of agreement before walking over and sitting next to him, a safe distance apart. He didn’t know if he could handle sitting on the couch together for long. It would bring back too many half-formed ideas and wants that no longer had any basis in reality.

Hide stared at the wall in thought, caught in a strange situation. They both knew that he wanted to ask what had happened, yet out of consideration he refrained. Kaneki didn’t want to be the first to speak, or offer more information. No point to it now. What was done was done, and it would only frighten Hide. Tied in the silence that they both understood, wishing for the other to start but not expecting them to.

“…you should leave.” He muttered in a hoarse monotone.

“Huh?” Hide turned his head to face him, surprised.

“It’s not safe here.” His voice had sounded gravelly from lack of use.

“It’s not safe anywhere these days. Might as well be here, yeah?”

He didn’t receive an answer. Trying to take the initiative to get him to open up and get whatever it was he needed off his chest, Hide stretched to put an arm around his shoulders. A common gesture for them, at one time. Kaneki’s eyes shifted with unnerving quickness towards the movement and he reflexively tensed. Hide froze, he hadn’t expected this type of reaction. Maybe he might have scolded him or scooted over but…

Upon seeing the hurt in his expression, the sharpness in his features softened, if only minutely.

“Sorry.”

“You’re always apologizing.”

Kaneki gave a tiny reminiscent smile. At least that remained the same, he thought.

After lowering his arm and letting it rest on the plush surface of the cushion, Hide drew up his courage and asked barely above a whisper,

“…that bad?” He couldn’t even begin to imagine what had changed him so drastically. Afraid to question and afraid of the response he might get.

The hand that clenched into a fist, white-knuckled and shaking fully explained it. His breathing quickened a little and without meaning to, Kaneki started counting mentally again. Attention narrowed until nothing but those simple words, those numbers remained. He would cling to them like a drowning man to straws.

Hide had never considered himself the violent type. Enthusiastically bombastic, well sure, but aggressive? Not so much. At this moment, however, when his best friend stared blindly into the space, eyes lifeless and nerves trembling with past horrors, he felt that damaging nature creep over him.

He wanted to hurt whoever had done this. He wanted to crush them under his own two hands. He wanted to tear everything out of them and replace it with Kaneki’s suffering. Make them feel what trauma he endured. Make them writhe in the agony of the one they had ravaged. Even if it was selfish of him, he wanted make them suffer. Already he was angry that he couldn’t save Kaneki from whatever happened at that time, but at least he wanted to make them pay now.

"...ki.”

“...aneki.”

“Kaneki.”

Someone was calling him. He took a ragged breath and blinked hard a few times, trying to faze back into reality. He started to remember that he was back in his old apartment, started to realize where he was. The person was-

Hide. Next to him, closer than he last recalled, sat his best friend. The cheerful, good-natured side of him was masked for the moment with a combination of anger, sadness, and sympathy. Oh, Kaneki realized, he had seen… _that_. He cupped half of his face, concealing the traitorous eye that had ruined everything. In the street below, red and white lights screamed past.

All had gone to hell, these past few days with CCG's raid. What was different to him, Hide thought, was that it seemed as though hell had already visited. It just chose to expand its reach beyond one college student who tried to keep his loneliness away by reading literature.

“Some mess we’ve gotten into, huh?” Hide’s hand alighted gently on his shaking back but the ghoul visibly flinched. The motion made the ache in his chest deepen.

Kaneki let a bitter chuckle escape him, crawling from his lips like a vile ether, he echoed the words, “Some mess.”

Sirens pushed past the horizon wailed distantly, a reminder if nothing else, of what transpired. Hide listened to them resonate, attention on the ceiling as he looked upwards for any form of divine encouragement. He received silence as a haughty reply.

He smiled in thanks anyway.


End file.
